Many business applications have been developed to operate in client/server environments. Client computer systems typically interact with business applications via a web-based interface. Such client computer systems use browsers to access a web server that interfaces with the business applications. The browsers display pages of information received from web servers. When a user selects a displayed link, the browser sends a request associated with that link to the web server identified by the link. The requests may be HTTP-request messages, WAP-request messages, and so on. The requests may include a uniform resource locator to identify a resource to be accessed and parameters that specify the type of access to the resource. When the web server receives such a request, it parses the request and invokes the appropriate business application to process the request. The invoked business application may generate a responsive document, such as an HTML document, a WML document, and so on. The business application sends the document to the web server, which encapsulates the document into a response message, such as an HTTP-response message, a WAP-response message, and so on. The web server then sends the response message to the requesting client computer system. The browser of the client computer system then processes the document, which may result in an update of the displayed information.
Many companies may develop some of their own business applications (“internal business applications”), but oftentimes they purchase the bulk of their business applications (“external business applications”) from other companies. When a company develops an internal business application, it may want to use the functionality and data provided by external business applications. For example, the marketing organization of a company may develop a business application to perform some analysis on its customer base. Valuable information about its customer base may be available through an external business application such as a customer relationship management (“CRM”) business application. The internal business application may invoke the CRM application to retrieve data. It may then analyze the retrieved data and display the results of the analysis to a user. In many cases, the company may want the internal business application to display some data provided by the CRM business application along with the results of the analysis. It is currently a difficult and complex process to integrate the results of the analysis of an internal business application and the data provided by an external business application into a consistent and user-friendly interface. It would be desirable to have a method and system that would allow companies the flexibility to efficiently integrate the data and user interface of external business applications with their internal business applications in a way that is consistent and user-friendly.